Replacement of light bulbs in street light fittings are traditionally handled by a person that is lifted to the street light fitting in a man lift or similar and by hand opens up the light fitting and next replaces the light bulb. This is problematic in several aspects.
The most obvious aspect is the risk that the person performing this operation is exposed to as the work is carried out at significant height. Another problem with having personnel lifted at height in the vicinity of lampposts is, in those cases these lampposts are found in the vicinity of overhead lines, that overhead lines generally are uninsulated and thus are highly dangerous to come into contact with. This represents an additional significant risk.
In addition to the work being carried out at height, the work with lampposts involves further problems since the lampposts are not completely fixed. The strain that lampposts are exposed to from weather and wind in addition to the facts that they are very tall and that the street light fitting often has a considerable weight makes them swaying by nature. This results in that the lamppost itself in many cases may not provide support at e.g. replacement of street light fittings.
In addition, the operation of replacing the lighting unit/bulb or the entire street light fitting requires a relatively long period of time since the person that performs the work has to be lowered down between each operation, when the man lift or similar is moved between the lampposts. In most cases, the man lift or similar has to be driven on the roadway, or the like, that the street lighting is intended to illuminate. This unit is usually very slow and requires much space on the roadway, which is problematic since the man lift or similar, and also the person that performs the work and has to move between the man lift and the driver's seat, risk to get hit. For the personnel, it is especially dangerous if the stationary man lift or similar gets hit in the raised position. Additionally, the traffic and the traffic flow may be adversely affected by the presence of the man lift, which may increase the risk of other accidents.
In order to minimize the impact on traffic, the work is advantageously performed during evening and night time, which is not always preferable from the view of the performing personnel.
All this implies that the time required for replacing a lighting unit/bulb, or the entire street light fitting, should be kept to an absolute minimum.
A first step in minimizing the time required for replacing lighting unit/bulb is to replace a larger unit than just the lighting unit/bulb. A larger unit may often be made more robust than just a lighting unit/bulb and may be specifically adapted to be easy to mount and dismount.